Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Jul;74(7):1170-1184. doi: 10.1177/1747021821998489. Epub 2021 Mar 29.
The context reinstatement (CR) effect is the finding that target stimuli are better remembered when presented in the same context as during initial encoding, compared with a different context. It remains unclear, however, whether emotional features of the context affect this memory benefit. In two experiments, we investigated whether the anxiety-provoking nature of a context scene might influence the CR effect. During encoding, participants viewed target faces paired with scenes validated as either highly anxiety-provoking or not, half of which contained other faces embedded within the scene. During retrieval, target faces were presented again with either the same or a new context scene. In Experiment 1, the expected CR effect was observed when the contexts were low-anxiety scenes or high-anxiety scenes without embedded faces. In contrast, the CR effect was absent when the contexts were high-anxiety scenes containing embedded faces. In Experiment 2, to determine whether the presence of embedded faces or the anxiety level of scenes reduced the CR effect, we included an additional context type: low-anxiety scenes with embedded faces. Once again, the CR effect was absent only when the context scene was highly anxiety-provoking with embedded faces: reinstating this context type failed to benefit memory for targets. Results suggest that the benefit to target memory via reinstating a context depends critically on emotional characteristics of the reinstated context.
背景重现（CR）效应是指与在初始编码期间不同的上下文相比，当目标刺激在相同的上下文中呈现时，目标刺激被更好地记住。然而，尚不清楚上下文的情绪特征是否会影响这种记忆益处。在两项实验中，我们研究了上下文场景的焦虑性质是否会影响 CR 效应。在编码期间，参与者观看了与经过验证的高度令人焦虑或不令人焦虑的场景配对的目标面孔，其中一半场景中嵌入了其他面孔。在检索期间，再次呈现目标面孔，要么是相同的上下文场景，要么是新的上下文场景。在实验 1 中，当上下文是低焦虑场景或没有嵌入面孔的高焦虑场景时，观察到了预期的 CR 效应。相比之下，当上下文是包含嵌入面孔的高焦虑场景时，CR 效应不存在。在实验 2 中，为了确定嵌入面孔的存在或场景的焦虑水平是否降低了 CR 效应，我们包括了另一种上下文类型：包含嵌入面孔的低焦虑场景。同样，只有当上下文场景高度焦虑并包含嵌入面孔时，CR 效应才不存在：重新呈现这种上下文类型无助于记忆目标。结果表明，通过重新呈现上下文来提高目标记忆的益处严重依赖于重新呈现上下文的情绪特征。
